http://perkyskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/09/personal-view-of-harm-in-astrology-part.html

I am seriously going to have to plan in advance so that if anyone talks about my planetary aspects after my death, my survivors will be able to push a big red button labeled “HAUNT” which will cause some kind of power grid outage or release a table-rapping swarm of trained bees or something.

I really had to restrain myself from laughing in his face.

[...]I find it cruel to be left without any means of closure, but for your most generous astrological speculations. How sad for his fans that astrological speculation is more than what journalists have thus far revealed. Was it with a rope, necktie, bedsheet, garden hose or shower curtain? Shame on the press and his family for keeping this such a secret!

WTF?!?!

How is it that people actually get to think let alone formulate such an unkind, unsensitive, question and then starts blaming the family of the deseased one for not revealing enough sick deteails about the suicide?

Now I have even more reasons never to reveal personal info. about myself: I hide my full name (or my name, for that case) just to keep my data away from spammers, curious eyes, stalker wannabes and general morons. Now I’ll have to hide my b-day data from astrologer-wannabes, and my hands from gypsies.

I misspoke. I didn’t mean that I thought she was an atheist or even anything other than a committed Catholic ’til the end.

I meant that she engaged in pretense of a much more superficial kind. The pretense of acting like someone fulfilled by their religion, when in fact, she was far from the image she was beaming out to the world. She proclaimed JC’s love as if she felt it, herself. She was held up as an example. She called her own smile “a mask.”

But, if I were to take her emptiness and call her a secret atheist, that would be going too far.

“Ghoulish”? Perhaps. That’s a risk whenever someone speaks of the dead.

Is that really a fair comparison? MT admitted, herself, that her faith was a sham.

No she didn’t. You see? You’re doing the same thing as others do.

MT is dead. While she was alive she had many different thoughts and sometimes struggles with her beliefs. That doesn’t make her necessarily an atheist, but merely a human.

Over my lifetime, I have been a Christian, a spiritualist, and variations between and outside of that, most recently an atheist.

Now, if you uncovered writings of mine where I struggled with beliefs, would and should you publish that posthumously and say “look, this proves Siamang believed in God!!!!”?

Perhaps my mind may change again on the issue before I am dead. What does it matter? Let me speak publicly on my beliefs, as MT did on hers. Give her the respect to have said her peace during her lifetime on how she viewed herself wholistically, and don’t elevate her doubts to a significance beyond where she held them herself.

Otherwise, it is IMO a ghoulish practice to speculate on the beliefs, and or eternal disposition of the dead, especially since the recently passed are not their to rebut the claims.

Lady Hope anyone?

Then there’s an older relative I have who got pink eye once after sewing on Friday and now she won’t sew on Friday anymore. She thinks God was punishing her for sewing on Friday.

I think your relative may have stumbled upon one of the Lost Five Commandments that were revealed by Mel Brooks. Until we discover commandments eleven through fifteen, we’re screwed. One of them might very well be “Thou shalt not sew on Fridays.”

Is that really a fair comparison? MT admitted, herself, that her faith was a sham.

Mother Theresa’s faith wasn’t a sham. What she acknowledged was that she stopped, very early on, experiencing any sort of feedback from God. If anything, it was a purer faith than that exhibited by most people because it was unconfirmed.

I don’t have a problem with MT because she continued to believe despite the lack of validation, or because her humanitarian efforts were based on that faith. I have a problem with her because she believed in eternal damnation, because she appears to have been something of a closet exclusivist (converting people on their deathbeds so they could go to heaven, etc.), and because, reportedly, she withheld pain medication from those who were in need of it, believing their suffering “purified” them in some way.

I find it shameful, and I include atheists doing it to Mother Teresa as well.

Is that really a fair comparison? MT admitted, herself, that her faith was a sham.

She also swears by the “blood type diet” due to a mere coincidence which she sees as “proof” the diet is something everyone should try. She has a medical condition for which a plant based diet has been shown to alleviate the symptoms. She also has type A blood. The blood type diet tells people that type A’s should be vegetarians. I tried to tell her that she feels better because a plant based diet is good for her condition, not because some yahoo wrote a book that says type A’s should be vegetarians. She got upset and even offended. I asked her if the blood type diet would work on people who have her condition but are type O’s (who are supposedly carnivores). She changed the subject and never answered.

Then there’s an older relative I have who got pink eye once after sewing on Friday and now she won’t sew on Friday anymore. She thinks God was punishing her for sewing on Friday.

I know it is human nature to look for connections in things/events and I also know that when connections aren’t readily obvious, people tend to invent them. But, good grief, how about applying a bit of logic and rationality to the mix?